


Aching

by FullmetalChords



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:14:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/pseuds/FullmetalChords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders spends three years aching for Hawke, but not in the way you might think. </p><p>--</p><p>Short, sweet streamfic written for heartbleats on Tumblr!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aching

It hadn’t been about sex.

 

It had been a factor, of course. Anders might have been an abomination, possessed by a celibate spirit of justice, but he wasn’t _dead_. The occasional shame-filled night he spent with his hand working beneath his blankets, doing his best _not_ to think about Hawke and failing miserably each time… well, they were inevitable, he supposed.

 

But when he daydreamed about Hawke, his mind never immediately went to being pinned against the nearest wall, or Hawke’s witty mouth undoing the ties of Anders’s trousers. As his months of idle fantasy turned into years of pathetic longing, Anders found himself yearning more and more for the little things he’d been denied, living in the Circle.

 

He would picture a lover tenderly touching his shoulder as he worked in the clinic late at night, a quiet reminder to get some rest. He imagined gentle fingers running through his hair, combing out the greasy tangles. He pictured himself, fussing in the kitchen making burnt eggs and toast for two. He daydreamed about falling asleep in a lover’s arms – and even better, waking up there the next morning.

 

All of that had been impossible in the Circle. Anders had had lovers before, but with most, their relations had been hidden in private corners, everything rushed and hard and fast with none of the affection he needed afterward to make himself feel whole instead of empty. Karl… he’d been the one exception. Karl had been special. Their affair had been as hidden as all the others, their guards always kept up in case a Templar rounded the corner; but Anders still remembered, with no small amount of bittersweetness, the way Karl had held him in the middle of the night when he’d had a nightmare. The way he’d reach to hold Anders’s hand under a bench in the library. The way Karl’s fingers would trace his jaw in the middle of a kiss, and the softness at the corner of his eyes whenever he looked at him.

 

Anders had tried for so long, after Karl had been taken away, to convince himself that he didn’t need that anymore. That he didn’t need that one person to show him they cared about him. A mage did not fall in love, he told himself even now, hiding in his dank little hole in Darktown. What right did Anders have to want that, anyway? How could he be so selfish to want comfort and support for himself, when hundreds of mages still rotted away in that prison across the water, unable to experience any of the marginal freedoms he already had?

 

And so Anders did his best to force down that part of himself, the lonely part that longed to hold someone’s hand again. He buried it in his work, in the clinic that only seemed to grow busier every day. He gave more and more of himself to Kirkwall’s mage underground, leading mages out of the Gallows one by one and beginning to scribble a manifesto by candlelight. He tagged along with Hawke from time to time, patching up wounds and slowly, accidentally, making friends among that strange little band.

 

But the thing was, the longer he ignored that part of himself (the human part, some shred of himself whispered, the part left untainted by Justice), the stronger it became. _You need someone soft_ , the voice whispered, _but not too soft, just enough to cushion your jagged edges. Someone to shoulder your burdens with you when it becomes too much. Someone who knows all the horrible bits about you – all the many ways in which you are cursed – and still will never run away._

It killed him that even after everything, Anders still needed someone. Being touched by someone, held by someone, loved by someone… more than anything else, he _ached_ for that.

 

And when Anders looked up and realized the lover from his daydreams had taken Hawke’s face, that’s when he knew he was truly doomed.  

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this with gender-neutral pronouns for Hawke, so you can imagine any one you want to. :)
> 
> find me on Tumblr @phoenixrei!


End file.
